Isn't God evil, if He allowed Adam's fall to harm us?

[A_Thinker]

The root complaint underlying the problem of evil is that even innocent fetuses suffer. Everyone suffers. Hence the atheist sees no evidence that my sister's illness is the result of sin. If it's happening even to known innocents, why attribute it to sin?

MY position offers him a change of perspective. What if there are no innocents? What if every fetus sinned in a past life, as subsections of Adam? NOW we have some actual justice happening. A solid theodicy potentially makes all the difference in the world.

Again that's just the first part of the picture. The 2nd part is, why did God create Adam in the first place? However, I can only cover that part in Controversial Theology.

Now matter how you slice it, ... I think that you still end up with a problem of perception of justice. Even if we approach the idea from your perspective, the situation seems manifestly unjust, as the whole of humanity suffers for time immemorial for the sin of eating the fruit of one tree.

A better approach may be to look at the issue (of human life in an imperfect world) from the opposite perspective. Let's say that the world is just as we know it ... imperfect ... babies get sick and die, planes crash, plagues strike, earthquakes and hurricanes ravage, putting men, women, and children at significant risk of hurt and harm ... and ensuring that we all come to an unavoidable end.

Can it be considered loving ... to bring creations into such a world as this? (Note that by ascribing such as "unloving" indicts every human parent who acted to bring life into this world).

And all for the opportunity to gain unending bliss in relationship with the One Who made us. But first, ... we must run the gauntlet ?

Note ... how from this viewing, ... those who exit this life early ... are, then considered the fortunate ones. I think that it is the promise of everlasting union with God ... which balances out the pain.

1 Corinthians 2

9 Rather, as it is written:

“No eye has seen,
no ear has heard,
no heart has imagined,
what God has prepared for those who love Him.”

And so ... it is only to be expected that those who have no desire or ambition for the eternal things of God ... might see this life as unfair. After all, ... they are only considering what is, essentially, boot-camp.

I think Paul sums this up rather nicely ... and if Paul can speak of "light afflictions", I think that we can, as well.

2 Corinthians 4

8 We are troubled on every side, yet not distressed; we are perplexed, but not in despair;9 Persecuted, but not forsaken; cast down, but not destroyed; 10 Always bearing about in the body the dying of the Lord Jesus, that the life also of Jesus might be made manifest in our body. 11 For we which live are always delivered unto death for Jesus' sake, that the life also of Jesus might be made manifest in our mortal flesh.

2 Corinthians 4 is a very good summary of this position. Here is a portion of the text ...

16 Therefore we do not lose heart. Though our outer self is wasting away, yet our inner self is being renewed day by day. 17 For our light and momentary affliction is producing for us an eternal glory that is far beyond comparison. 18 So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen. For what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.

Recall, that Paul "knew" a man ... who had visited the third heaven ...

2 Corinthians 12

2 I know a man in Christ who fourteen years ago was caught up to the third heaven. Whether it was in the body or out of the body I do not know—God knows. 3 And I know that this man—whether in the body or apart from the body I do not know, but God knows— 4 was caught up to paradise and heard inexpressible things, things that no one is permitted to tell.

Would it be "loving" to deny anyone this opportunity ?

 

[DamianWarS]

Deflection. Ad hominem.

do you not demand that love is according to what you deem love is? this is your world view, not mine, and if you require this personal world view in order to find value and make sense of God then this is existentialism.

Your world view too. You're in denial about the cogency of the objection and, in so doing, hold to a absurd position. Let's be clear about it (although post 12 was clear enough). If key terms in the Bible don't mean what you ordinarily take them to mean, then the Bible cannot be regarded as providing hope. For example I personally take honesty to mean indeceitfulness (although I can condone dishonesty when a white lie satisfies the law of love). If honesty does NOT mean that, then all the promises in the Bible could be lies. It affords no hope. Similarly if God's 'love' doesn't mean love as I define it (kindness), the Bible affords no hope.

love according to God means love according to God. This doesn't mean it isn't agreeable with your world view but it is not contingent upon it and if it is then this is existentialism.

Thus for you to suggest that we - as responsible exegetes intent on logical consistency - have no need to hold God to our human definitions of the virtues - is patently absurd. And if you keep insisting to the contrary, without showing me a clear resolution of the apparent contradiction, you'll be ignored. I just don't have a lot of free time to waste on apparent nonsense.

your contradiction is that words based on personal identity will undoubtedly create innumerable nuanced meanings some with gross misunderstandings and counter-biblical. A parent may do a lot of things that their child doesn't identify as acts of love but the child's understanding doesn't determine if the act is love or not. This doesn't mean the child is unable to understand, learn or mirror love from their parent, of course, they are, but it doesn't mean everything the parent does the child understands correctly as love nor do they need to.

Your 'rebuttal to this has been, "But I'm not having existential crisis. I DO believe that God loves." Right, for two reasons:
(1) As a Christian, you have the Inward Witness of the Holy Spirit helping to persuade you of His love.
(2) Fact is, when you read the Bible, you DO hold God to those standards. You DO read love as kindness, for example, and honesty as indeceitfulness. The only reason you're taking exception here is to cover up holes in your theodicy of Adam and God in general, such as I have been alleging.

I get what you're saying that when we read words we must have the capacity to understand those words otherwise they ultimately have no meaning and it might as well be gibberish. Where this is true this doesn't mean we get to fully grasp every act of God even though we grasp the meaning of words like love. God does stuff that we may not identify with love but this doesn't mean it isn't love.

There's an argument for a balance here that we can't just say that any act, regardless what it is, must be love if it's from God. If God is love then it would stand to reason there are acts that would contradict this nature. However, we shouldn't conclude to dismiss everything that makes us uncomfortable but rather allow a level of tension to exist accept we don't know everything, God is sovereign and he is love.

Exactly. Thank you for admitting that! The whole Garden scenario is completely irrational on the traditional understanding of God. I love it when a debater concedes a crucial point in my position.

pre-Abrahamic accounts are quite unique and if it were any other culture we would instantly say the accounts were non-literal, even use the word "myth" and obviously influenced by other cultures. There's a lot of evidence to support this type of thinking but "myth" is the wrong word and these accounts can still be called truth.

For example, after Washington cut down the cherry tree he said the famous line "Father, I cannot tell a lie, I cut the tree" then he was praised by his Father for his honesty. Westerners applaud the account because in Western culture honesty, regardless of the consequences, has a high value. The ironic part is that it is all a fabrication and this never happened. So does this mean there is no truth to the account? In American culture, it has a lot of meaning and it shows us how honest Washington was and as a Father of the nation it then by extension shows the values the country was built on and perhaps continue to have. And this is the truth of the account, frankly, the details of the account are somewhat fluid but the import part is the goal it builds on which is the greater truth.

I see this as the same with these early accounts in Genesis and this is consistent with easter philosophy and Hebraic block logic. Did Adam and Eve exist? Did they eat some forbidden fruit and cause the whole world to enter a fallen state lasting thousands of years? It really doesn't matter, what matters is the goal of the account, and that goal is not that God is a psychopath but that we exist in a fallen state that we cannot fix and God has made a way to fix it. You seem more interested in the surface details and they try and reconcile it to fit your world view but miss the point of the deeper details of what is happening.

 

[Halbhh]

A good parent - all the ones I know of at least - would never act the way that traditional Christianity is predicating of God. I've been posting copiously on that discrepancy.

Since the term 'traditional' Christianity means different things to different people, and you've of course so many posts in this thread, could you point me to a couple to illustrate what you are thinking of when you refer to it? (it is unlikely to be what I thought of: the various Orthodox churches, or even the early church of the 1rst century, either one. Like, you might (or might not!) mean something like 1980s-2010s era 'conservative' evangelicals for instance (which to me seems very unlike the early church). Or do you mean some entirely other thing?)

 

[bling]

All Christians including myself believe that God is good and proclaim His goodness.

But what if our doctrines inadvertently extrapolate otherwise? The church clings to two views of Adam:
(1) Adam was our representative. ( Catholics and Protestants)
(2) Adam's sin didn't incriminate us but did have horribly painful consequences for our world. (Orthodox).

I suppose a third view exists.
(3) Adam never literally existed. Biologically we evolved into this horrible world.

All three views unacceptably extrapolate to a God who is hardly the epitome of kindness and thus is either comparatively evil or totally evil. After all, given the power to create a world, any of us would have exercised more kindness than 1,2, and 3.

2,000 years of investigation have demonstrated that only one solution is possible. And the church is well aware of it but has rejected it because it flatly contradicts their dogmatic assumption of an immaterial soul indivisible into parts.

The obvious solution is that God only made one material soul named Adam (even Eve was a physical subsection extracted from Adam's ribs). After Adam sinned, God removed most of that material soul from his body unto a place of suspended animation. When each of us was later conceived, God mated a separate microscopic portion of that sin-stained soul to each of our bodies. In other words, YOU are 100% Adam (not a mixture). YOU are the one who freely chose to eat of the forbidden fruit (although none of us currently remember doing so).

P.S. This remedy isn't a complete solution to the problem of evil. The larger issue is, why would a perfectly kind God allow temptation in the first place? Historically the church has made a pretense of providing satisfactory answers but has patently failed. Problem is I can't discuss this aspect on the current forum as my solution falls under Controversial Theology.

There is another option:

Unfortunately, sin has purpose and appears to be needed for all mature adults to help those who are willing to fulfill their earthly objective. The objective drives everything.

Starting with God is Love (the epitome of Love), which means God is totally unselfish and is not doing stuff for His own sake, but is doing everything for the sake of man which is also God’s desire and might be referred to as His sake.

God would be doing or allowing everything to help humans who are just willing to accept His help to fulfill their earthly objective.

So, God allows evil to happen to help humans, but God also allowed Christ to go to the cross to help humans.

There is really nothing you (a created being) can “do” to help the Creator, but you can allow of your own free will God to help you, which is God’s desire, since God is a huge giver of gifts.

Man’s objective is found in the God given Mission statement of: Loving God (and secondly Loving others) with all your heart, soul, mind and energy. In order to fulfill that mission man must first obtain Godly type Love which will make man like God Himself in that man will Love like God Loves. Would becoming like God Himself not be the greatest gift we could get?

The objective is not to never ever sin, but to obtain this Godly type Love is the first of man’s objective.

There are just something even an all-powerful Creator cannot do (there are things impossible to do), the big inability for us is to be created with instinctive (programmed) Godly type Love, since Godly type Love is not instinctive. Godly type love has to be the result of a free will decision by the being, to make it the person’s Love apart from God. In other words: If the Love was in a human from the human’s creation it would be a robotic type love and not a Godly type Love. Also if God “forces” this Love on a person (Kind a like a shotgun wedding with God holding the shotgun) it would not be “loving” on God’s part and the love forced on the person would not be Godly type love. This Love has to be the result of a free will moral choice with real likely alternatives (for humans those alternatives include the perceived pleasures of sin for a season.)



This Love is way beyond anything humans could develop, obtain, learn, earn, pay back or ever deserve, so it must be the result of a gift that is accepted or rejected (a free will choice).

This “Love” is much more than just an emotional feeling; it is God Himself (God is Love). If you see this Love you see God.

All mature adults do stuff that hurts others (this is called sin) these transgressions weigh on them burden them to the point the individual seeks relief (at least early on before they allow their hearts to be hardened). Lots of “alternatives” can be tried for relief, but the only true relief comes from God with forgiveness (this forgiveness is pure charity [grace/mercy/Love]). The correct humble acceptance of this Forgiveness (Charity) automatically will result in Love (we are taught by Jesus (Luke 7: 36-50) and our own experience “…he that is forgiven much will Love much…”). Sin is thus made hugely significant, so there will be an unbelievable huge debt to be forgiven of and thus result in an unbelievable huge “Love” (Godly type Love).

In order to be forgiven of sin you must first sin, so sin is necessary but not desired.

This messed up world is actually the very best place for willing mature adult individuals to see, receive, give, experience, accept and know Godly type Love. All these tragedies provide opportunities for Love, but that does not mean we go around causing opportunities, since we are to be ceasing these opportunities (there are plenty of opportunities) to show/experience Love.

You do not have to believe the Adam and Eve story is true to get lots of good messages from it. Most people go through a time in which they ask: “How could a Loving God allow such a thing”, which means “why does God not start us all out in a Garden type situation without, needy people, limited resources, death, and questions about His existence?”

What we can do is thank Adam and Eve for showing us and them that what we might consider the ideal situation is a lousy situation for man to fulfill his earthly objective. Adam and Eve as our very best all human representatives did not fulfill the objective while sinless in the Garden and really could not. The situation after sinning outside the Garden did provide a way to fulfill the objective.

I and it seems other have to have opportunities at our doorstep to respond with Love, if I would just cease the opportunities at some distance there might be few opportunities (tragedies) needed for me, so if you want to blame someone for all these tragedies blame me for not ceasing more earlier.

Hell does nothing for the people going to hell, but that was their choice since they kept refusing to accept God’s help (forgiveness, Love, grace, mercy, charity) to the point they will never humbly accept. Hell does help some willing individuals to not put off their acceptance of God’s help.

That is just an introduction.

 

[A_Thinker]

Starting with God is Love (the epitome of Love), which means God is totally unselfish and is not doing stuff for His own sake, but is doing everything for the sake of man which is also God’s desire and might be referred to as His sake.

I think that God is a "family man" ... so that He does everything for the "family" ... which includes ... Himself ...

 

[bling]

I think that God is a "family man" ... so that He does everything for the "family" ... which includes ... Himself ...

How much you Love someone can be measured with how much you are willing to sacrifice for that person, so can someone Love more than God?

 

[A_Thinker]

How much you Love someone can be measured with how much you are willing to sacrifice for that person, so can someone Love more than God?

It isn't my contention that anyone can LOVE more than God does ...

 

[bling]

It isn't my contention that anyone can LOVE more than God does ...

My parents were wonderful and I knew they put me before themselves.

 

[JAL]

Now matter how you slice it, ... I think that you still end up with a problem of perception of justice. Even if we approach the idea from your perspective, the situation seems manifestly unjust, as the whole of humanity suffers for time immemorial for the sin of eating the fruit of one tree.

A better approach..

Um..no. Punishing the innocent isn't a better approach. In fact it's a logical contradiction to have a supposedly just God punishing the innocent.

Your point is well taken, you apparently don't like the degree of punishment meted out in my theodicy. But I think you're overlooking something - we don't know the density of the original Adam. You're looking it as 'one man sinned'. True, but possibly the wrong perspective. Let me explain. Suppose 100 million angels fell (we don't know how many). Shouldn't each one pay individually? Sure.

Now imagine a very dense angel jointly constituting 100 million angels. Shouldn't the punishment be the same amount meted out to 100 million angels? I think it should.

Secondly, we don't know the enormity of Adam's sin because sin is relative to an individual's conscience. Suppose I steal a paperclip from you. In my mind, it's harmless. Turns out that the paperclip was somehow a necessary component of a life support machine. How guilty am I in God's sight? Probably He's not too upset with me, since I didn't know. It was basically an accident.

Thus not every sin is the same. How grave was Adam's sin? Suppose that God, when He issued the prohibition against the fruit, gave Adam a vision of a world where, as a consequence of his sin, 100 billion people suffer starvation, disease, violence, natural disasters, and aging. In this case, Adam knew he was killing 100 billion people. NOW how much punishment does Adam deserve? Potentially, he deserves to be killed 100 billion times!

So it's all relative. We don't know by what standards God is judging Adam, and it may be that God and you simply have a difference of opinion as to how much punishment is appropriate. Nothing I can do about that.

 

[JAL]

I agree, since loving someone is a conscious decision that make and act on and also I we if Adam never sinned and we never inherited it how would he ever be able to show how much He loves us. The sacrifice of His son is the greatest example.

He shows the magnitude of His love, to the innocent, by punishing them for Adam's sin? By inflicting upon them a sinful nature excruciatingly painful in its harmful side effects?

 

[JAL]

I reread it. I still feel the same way. God could propagate us however He wants, so it is still the same result. He didn’t have to, as in your theory, make us that way (as Adam himself). It’s a creative out of the box way to consider it though.

No it's not. In my theodicy, I myself am Adam and, as an innocent man unencumbered with a sinful nature, I volitionally chose to corrupt myself and merit punishment. In alternative systems, a sinful nature is thrust upon them unjustly without their complicity. It's difficult to imagine two judicial systems more polarized in their sense of justice - and yet you want to conflate them?

 

[JAL]

do you not demand that love is according to what you deem love is? this is your world view, not mine, and if you require this personal world view in order to find value and make sense of God then this is existentialism.

Nope, it's an attempt to achieve a theodicy that, for once, isn't logically self-contradictory.

your contradiction is that words based on personal identity will undoubtedly create innumerable nuanced meanings some with gross misunderstandings and counter-biblical.

Right. That's the concern. God's loving kindness isn't 'nuanced', nor is His honesty/integrity. God isn't 'almost' what I'd consider honest. He's honest. He isn't 'almost' what I'd consider loving/kind. He's kind.

Virtues suffering qualification do NOT capture authorial intent. The biblical promises do not portray God as 'almost' a firm foundation for eternal hope, or 'almost' perfectly holy but rather unqualifiedly such.

You go on to further defend your theory of nuanced love:

A parent may do a lot of things that their child doesn't identify as acts of love but the child's understanding doesn't determine if the act is love or not. This doesn't mean the child is unable to understand, learn or mirror love from their parent, of course, they are, but it doesn't mean everything the parent does the child understands correctly as love nor do they need to.

Agreed, but this argument carries weight only if we don't know the final outcome. For example suppose God says to me, Take that vial of poison off the shelf and spike your boss's meal with it. Obviously, since I don't know the final outcome, it won't agree with my definition of love. But it turns out that this poison was, for this man, the perfect antidote to some other life-threatening condition. God saved his life. Had I known the final outcome, I wouldn't have doubted God's love (defined as kindness).

As far as this world is concerned, we DO know the final outcome and it's actually not all that pretty, because many people suffer a very painful life followed by hell Therefore a viable theodicy is obligated - if it hopes to avoid logical contradiction - to reconcile God's acts with His supposed goodness and justice. In a word, it is obligated to address the problem of evil. Why? Because if we don't address it - if we don't resolve the apparent contradictions - it is a sign that our definition of God is possibly all wrong. Which is in fact my position. I find it unbelievable that Christians today still think that the cross was God's most costly sacrifice. They don't seem to have a clue of who God is and what He did for them. He gets no credit whatsoever for His most toilsome laborious work. It's strongly alluded to in Scripture but Christians don't see it because they read the book through the lenses of 2,000 years of misunderstanding. I am convinced the OT saints were well aware of it, while our generation is still in the dark ages compared to them.

love according to God means love according to God. This doesn't mean it isn't agreeable with your world view but it is not contingent upon it and if it is then this is existentialism.

Scripture is at great pains to express the unbridgeable light years of distance between the absolute holiness of God in contrast to the sinfulness of man. We are deceitful, prideful, wicked, unforgiving, unkind, etc. God stands at the exact polar opposite of that extreme. He isn't pointed in a skewed, nuanced, questionable direction 'that we cannot understand'. He's clearly moving in the exact opposite direction. Any notion of a 'nuanced' kindness or a nuanced integrity flies in the face of every page of the Bible.

Look, as responsible theologians we've got to pick the MOST cogent view, the one that is LEAST likely to be a contradiction in terms. My theodicy isn't saddled with the seeming contradictions that I see in yours.

I get what you're saying that when we read words we must have the capacity to understand those words otherwise they ultimately have no meaning and it might as well be gibberish. Where this is true this doesn't mean we get to fully grasp every act of God even though we grasp the meaning of words like love. God does stuff that we may not identify with love but this doesn't mean it isn't love.

See above.

There's an argument for a balance here that we can't just say that any act, regardless what it is, must be love if it's from God. If God is love then it would stand to reason there are acts that would contradict this nature. However, we shouldn't conclude to dismiss everything that makes us uncomfortable but rather allow a level of tension to exist accept we don't know everything, God is sovereign and he is love.

To be honest with you, if most church leaders and scholars were honest enough to say, 'We just don't know the answers to these questions, looks like we might not have a satifactory theodicy as yet', then I'd feel a lot better about it. But all too often there is a pretense of copacetic theology.

I see this as the same with these early accounts in Genesis and this is consistent with easter philosophy and Hebraic block logic. Did Adam and Eve exist? Did they eat some forbidden fruit and cause the whole world to enter a fallen state lasting thousands of years? It really doesn't matter, what matters is the goal of the account, and that goal is not that God is a psychopath but that we exist in a fallen state that we cannot fix and God has made a way to fix it. You seem more interested in the surface details and they try and reconcile it to fit your world view but miss the point of the deeper details of what is happening.

No it does matter because a corporate Adam, as I have defined him, provides a viable theodicy. If you do away with Adam, you're still stuck with the problem of evil. I'm not saying it becomes insoluble, but it shouldn't be ignored, or treated in a perfunctory manner.

 

[JAL]

There is another option:

Unfortunately, sin has purpose and appears to be needed for all mature adults to help those who are willing to fulfill their earthly objective. The objective drives everything.

Starting with God is Love (the epitome of Love), which means God is totally unselfish and is not doing stuff for His own sake, but is doing everything for the sake of man which is also God’s desire and might be referred to as His sake.

God would be doing or allowing everything to help humans who are just willing to accept His help to fulfill their earthly objective.

So, God allows evil to happen to help humans, but God also allowed Christ to go to the cross to help humans.

Essentially your solution to the problem of evil is to argue that God is doing us all a favor by creating a world susceptible to darkness. In other words, it's an act of generosity. That doesn't extrapolate well. One has to ask, how generous God? And the traditional answer will be, 'Infinitely generous.'

Fine. In that case, He should keep doing such favors. He shouldn't stop being so generous. He should keep creating world after world after world, each times with similar outcomes (billions of new people are freshly added to hell's ever-growing population).

The truth is, nobody wants that kind of theocracy because it is clearly not an appropriate way for a maximally kind God to do us all a big favor. Clearly, the best thing that God can do for us is attempt to minimize, eliminate, and prevent suffering. As atheists correctly point out, traditional views of God simply cannot cogently explain why evil exists.

Man’s objective is found in the God given Mission statement of: Loving God (and secondly Loving others) with all your heart, soul, mind and energy. In order to fulfill that mission man must first obtain Godly type Love which will make man like God Himself in that man will Love like God Loves. Would becoming like God Himself not be the greatest gift we could get?

I see a disconnect here. You started off suggesting that God is the unselfish One doing us all a big favor but now your words virtually insinuate a narcissistic Creator.

The objective is not to never ever sin, but to obtain this Godly type Love is the first of man’s objective.

Equivocation. Very unclear. We are to achieve holy love but it's okay to sin?

There are just something even an all-powerful Creator cannot do (there are things impossible to do), the big inability for us is to be created with instinctive (programmed) Godly type Love, since Godly type Love is not instinctive. Godly type love has to be the result of a free will decision by the being, to make it the person’s Love apart from God. In other words: If the Love was in a human from the human’s creation it would be a robotic type love and not a Godly type Love. Also if God “forces” this Love on a person (Kind a like a shotgun wedding with God holding the shotgun) it would not be “loving” on God’s part and the love forced on the person would not be Godly type love. This Love has to be the result of a free will moral choice with real likely alternatives (for humans those alternatives include the perceived pleasures of sin for a season.)

Like most Christians, you seem to think that the mere mention of free will solves the problem of evil. Hardly. In my own system, everyone has free will, but God remains perfectly kind and just.

This Love is way beyond anything humans could develop, obtain, learn, earn, pay back or ever deserve, so it must be the result of a gift that is accepted or rejected (a free will choice).

This “Love” is much more than just an emotional feeling; it is God Himself (God is Love). If you see this Love you see God.

All mature adults do stuff that hurts others (this is called sin) these transgressions weigh on them burden them to the point the individual seeks relief (at least early on before they allow their hearts to be hardened). Lots of “alternatives” can be tried for relief, but the only true relief comes from God with forgiveness (this forgiveness is pure charity [grace/mercy/Love]). The correct humble acceptance of this Forgiveness (Charity) automatically will result in Love (we are taught by Jesus (Luke 7: 36-50) and our own experience “…he that is forgiven much will Love much…”). Sin is thus made hugely significant, so there will be an unbelievable huge debt to be forgiven of and thus result in an unbelievable huge “Love” (Godly type Love).

In order to be forgiven of sin you must first sin, so sin is necessary but not desired.

This messed up world is actually the very best place for willing mature adult individuals to see, receive, give, experience, accept and know Godly type Love. All these tragedies provide opportunities for Love, but that does not mean we go around causing opportunities, since we are to be ceasing these opportunities (there are plenty of opportunities) to show/experience Love.

You do not have to believe the Adam and Eve story is true to get lots of good messages from it. Most people go through a time in which they ask: “How could a Loving God allow such a thing”, which means “why does God not start us all out in a Garden type situation without, needy people, limited resources, death, and questions about His existence?”

What we can do is thank Adam and Eve for showing us and them that what we might consider the ideal situation is a lousy situation for man to fulfill his earthly objective. Adam and Eve as our very best all human representatives did not fulfill the objective while sinless in the Garden and really could not. The situation after sinning outside the Garden did provide a way to fulfill the objective.

I and it seems other have to have opportunities at our doorstep to respond with Love, if I would just cease the opportunities at some distance there might be few opportunities (tragedies) needed for me, so if you want to blame someone for all these tragedies blame me for not ceasing more earlier.

Hell does nothing for the people going to hell, but that was their choice since they kept refusing to accept God’s help (forgiveness, Love, grace, mercy, charity) to the point they will never humbly accept. Hell does help some willing individuals to not put off their acceptance of God’s help.

That is just an introduction.

Sorry but you seem to be rambling. I don't see a lot of piercing objections that would compel a response from me. I'm not just chatting here. Due to limited time, I'm trying to limit myself to the real meat of the discussion.

 

[Anthony Edgar]

All Christians including myself believe that God is good and proclaim His goodness.

But what if our doctrines inadvertently extrapolate otherwise? The church clings to two views of Adam:
(1) Adam was our representative. ( Catholics and Protestants)
(2) Adam's sin didn't incriminate us but did have horribly painful consequences for our world. (Orthodox).

I suppose a third view exists.
(3) Adam never literally existed. Biologically we evolved into this horrible world.

All three views unacceptably extrapolate to a God who is hardly the epitome of kindness and thus is either comparatively evil or totally evil. After all, given the power to create a world, any of us would have exercised more kindness than 1,2, and 3.

2,000 years of investigation have demonstrated that only one solution is possible. And the church is well aware of it but has rejected it because it flatly contradicts their dogmatic assumption of an immaterial soul indivisible into parts.

The obvious solution is that God only made one material soul named Adam (even Eve was a physical subsection extracted from Adam's ribs). After Adam sinned, God removed most of that material soul from his body unto a place of suspended animation. When each of us was later conceived, God mated a separate microscopic portion of that sin-stained soul to each of our bodies. In other words, YOU are 100% Adam (not a mixture). YOU are the one who freely chose to eat of the forbidden fruit (although none of us currently remember doing so).

P.S. This remedy isn't a complete solution to the problem of evil. The larger issue is, why would a perfectly kind God allow temptation in the first place? Historically the church has made a pretense of providing satisfactory answers but has patently failed. Problem is I can't discuss this aspect on the current forum as my solution falls under Controversial Theology.

We have to trust God even when we don't understand His ways. Best to respect and defer to His Wisdom rather than question it.

 

[A_Thinker]

Um..no. Punishing the innocent isn't a better approach. In fact it's a logical contradiction to have a supposedly just God punishing the innocent.

You're all on about punishment.

What if it's not punishment ? The Bible doesn't say that it is.

What if it's just being sent to basic training ... so that you can pass the next certification attempt ?

What if it's just the next stage of the molding of the clay ?

 

[All4Christ]

No it's not. In my theodicy, I myself am Adam and, as an innocent man unencumbered with a sinful nature, I volitionally chose to corrupt myself and merit punishment. In alternative systems, a sinful nature is thrust upon them unjustly without their complicity. It's difficult to imagine two judicial systems more polarized in their sense of justice - and yet you want to conflate them?

Your theory states that God decided to propagated Adam himself throughout the ages and multiply him across billions.
That means God propagated a sinful soul billions of times, knowing that each resulting person is thereby guilty of sin and thus condemned to be sinful.

God could make us however He wanted. He wasn’t limited to the way you propose.

You don’t have to agree. I don’t expect to change your opinion and you certainly won’t be changing mine.

Have a great day!

 

[JacksBratt]

He shows the magnitude of His love, to the innocent, by punishing them for Adam's sin? By inflicting upon them a sinful nature excruciatingly painful in its harmful side effects?

Again, we are not punished for Adam's sin... I would be punished for my sin... Why is it always someone else's fault. Why are we always blaming someone else for our bad choices..

You chose to swear. You chose to lie. You chose to take something that didn't belong to you.... You chose to disrespect your parents.

If you were born and lived a life, as Christ did, without one sin... you would have been innocent, as Christ was.

We were born with sin nature.. but not born with sin..... It doesn't take any human long, however, to sin due to their selfish desires.

 

[bling]

Essentially your solution to the problem of evil is to argue that God is doing us all a favor by creating a world susceptible to darkness. In other words, it's an act of generosity. That doesn't extrapolate well. One has to ask, how generous God? And the traditional answer will be, 'Infinitely generous.'

Fine. In that case, He should keep doing such favors. He shouldn't stop being so generous. He should keep creating world after world after world, each times with similar outcomes (billions of new people are freshly added to hell's ever-growing population).

The truth is, nobody wants that kind of theocracy because it is clearly not an appropriate way for a maximally kind God to do us all a big favor. Clearly, the best thing that God can do for us is attempt to minimize, eliminate, and prevent suffering. As atheists correctly point out, traditional views of God simply cannot cogently explain why evil exists.

I see a disconnect here. You started off suggesting that God is the unselfish One doing us all a big favor but now your words virtually insinuate a narcissistic Creator.

Equivocation. Very unclear. We are to achieve holy love but it's okay to sin?

Like most Christians, you seem to think that the mere mention of free will solves the problem of evil. Hardly. In my own system, everyone has free will, but God remains perfectly kind and just.


Sorry but you seem to be rambling. I don't see a lot of piercing objections that would compel a response from me. I'm not just chatting here. Due to limited time, I'm trying to limit myself to the real meat of the discussion.

God allowing or causing: satan to roam the earth, Jesus to go to the cross, tragedies of all kinds, hell, death, and sin is to help willing humans fulfill their objective.

This messed up evil world does provide opportunities for everyone to: see, receive, extend, experience, obtain and grow Godly type Love, but that does not mean more opportunities are always needed, since there is a limit to how many can be ceased. Our job is not to create opportunities, but the cease the opportunities.

Free will does not create: tragedies, sin, or evil, so in heaven we can have free will and not have any evil.

If we did not have free will there would be no need for evil, but the free will itself in the right situation can allow the person to fulfill their earthly objective.

 

[JAL]

Again, we are not punished for Adam's sin... I would be punished for my sin... Why is it always someone else's fault. Why are we always blaming someone else for our bad choices..

You chose to swear. You chose to lie. You chose to take something that didn't belong to you.... You chose to disrespect your parents.

If you were born and lived a life, as Christ did, without one sin... you would have been innocent, as Christ was.

We were born with sin nature.. but not born with sin..... It doesn't take any human long, however, to sin due to their selfish desires.

Sorry but if we were born with a sinful nature, then were already being punished for Adam's sin from the getgo. A sinful nature increases the likelihood that we will sin and thus:
(1) Teeters us over the precipice of the abyss (i.e. hell).
(2) Is itself a form of suffering/punishment (viz the agony of temptation)
(3) Dramatically increases the odds that we will harm one another (viz. Cain killed Abel).

All this hellishness befalls 100 billion people because - Adam sinned? Sorry that's a monstrosity except insofar as mitigated by my solution. Even Hitler would have been less cruel, at least he would have spared the Arians.

 

[JAL]

We have to trust God even when we don't understand His ways. Best to respect and defer to His Wisdom rather than question it.

But I don't find His ways hard to understand at all. It's a cinch. But on the traditional understanding of God, His ways are impossible to understand.

And please don't cite me verses about our inability to understand God's ways. That's a different context, it pertains to an act of God whose final outcome we cannot predict, as I explained at post 332.